Nordic Club Calendar
12/27/2009
A message from the President…
Whats up?
Well, another year has gone by and our first meeting of the season went well?
And now you will be able to check the web page for information updates.
AND most importantly - its dues paying and membership drive time! You can pay by contacting myself (Jerry) at 432-0366 or Dana Nave at 426-5746. It is still $7.00 for an individual and $10.00 for a family/household - per year.
It may seem like little has been happening but here is what we have to talk about…
About the Web-page:
I hope and intend to use this site to communicate information about the club and to display when activities are happening. One other thing we are going to try this season is posting a calendar of when the Redmont camp is reserved. Anne Gill will again be our most gracious Reservation Manager – (263-0970). She or I will update the reservation calendar – If I ever get to that… Other than that it’s a work in slow progress… I’ll try to get some better club pictures on it too… Much thanks to Penny for helping set this up!
Remember to tip your reservation manager…
General Club Information & $s:
I am currently working with the Forest Service permit administrator to update our annual operating plan and to prepare for re-doing our Special Use Permit in the near future. We need to do a better job reporting our volunteer days and our Redmont camp use days. We will also be putting together a proposal for a different kind of roof on the Redmont camp overstructure – to take the place of the current tarp. We need to get this proposal into the Forest Service this winter. I am forming a small committee to complete this task.
I need to get the financial report from Dana, but I think we will are doing OK for the moment. But we do need to pay our annual dues and recruit new members! Currently, and as has been done historically, I have been in conversation with Club Officers interested club members, and the Club’s Secretary of State (Bronec) to make decisions on how to spend our funds. We may want to revisit this decision making process some time in the future? Other than the new Tarp(s), propane, and some miscellaneous supplies for the Redmont camp we have not spent a lot of money this year. We will be putting an axe and shovel at our room in the Salt Creek Summit building and likely printing some trail brochures in the near future. I have also purchased a number of items to get the Nordic trail roller and track setter in working condition, as well as some gas for the machine to pull them.
The club will be donating $100 to the Wallowa Avalanche Center. This is going to be a great resource for our skiing safety and pleasure. Check it out on the web!
Speaking of funds and fundraising… We really, really, need to have folks volunteer to help at this year’s Frost Bite Film Festival – January 22nd 2010. We will be splitting the proceeds with the ice rink and the Fergi Ski patrol. Funds raised this time would go toward fuel costs for grooming, maintenance and repair of our grooming equipment, Blue diamonds and flagging for Nordic trails at SCS & Fergi, purchase a club chain saw, and most importantly, to purchase new roofing material for the Redmont camp overstructure. And while you are in the volunteering mood, take a moment to consider volunteering to help with putting on the Eagle Cap Extreme Sled Dog race this coming January 14-16th. It would be really cool for the club to have a noticeable presence there and could help raise membership?
Upcoming Work Needs:
We need volunteers to take the lead on installing new Blue Diamond trail markers on our (in order of priority) Devil’s View trail, Summit/Divide trail, the Wagon road trail, the trails at Fergi and the Redmont trail.
We need to haul some fire wood up to the Salt Creek Summit building for the warming room. Our sister clubs are contributing also. We have some fire wood at Fergi, that we can take up there and replace later by cutting from decks (that need to dry) at Fergi. So we need a volunteer for moving the wood up to SCS???
For the Nordic side of the club:
There are a few exciting opportunities developing on the Nordic side of the club’s interests. We have been working with the Eagle Cap Ski Club and hill owners to develop new and redevelop old Nordic Ski trails accessed from the base of Fergi. Ken Bronec has been taking the lead on this effort with the help of Charlie and I. We now have a short loop (a little over a mile) developed between the Ferguson Ridge Snow Park and the Fergi base area. The trail is cut out and blue diamonds are posted. The trail has been groomed one time but we need more snow! One can access the trail from both the snow park (parking pass required to park there) and from the Fergi parking lot. We hope to get a map produced in the near future. We also intend to develop a couple other loop options connecting to Bronec’s loop as well as develop a second, longer route (details to be worked out) that climbs to the west through RY timber to the Canal road. There are a number of great touring options that direction.
We also hope to start doing a little bit of Nordic grooming. No, don’t envision Anthony Lakes, this would be a little simpler… The Wallowa Lake tramway gave us a little 4 ft wide trail roller contraption to be pulled behind a machine appropriate for the job. So far it has worked well on the new Fergi Nordic loop. We also recovered our parallel stride track setting “machine” (made by an unnamed Wallowa County high school shop class), that we will pull behind a machine appropriate for the job… We intend to experiment with this exotic equipment around the loops at Fegi, using Charlie’s Rhino (thank Charlie again when you see him!) and perhaps a snow mobile. Our friend Dave (DMC) has graciously volunteered to provide snowmobile support toward learning how to pull this equipment… Ken says it will work… If it works we would like to use it to groom the Summit-Divide Nordic trail at Salt Creek Summit. In the long run we are going to need volunteers to sign up to help groom, so be thinking of that…
In the Backcountry this last season:
On the Backcountry side of things - at the Redmont Camp… We replaced the south side of overstructure tarp and patched some of the north side. Boy that was fun once again… We were also able to get a bunch of fire wood cut and split and stacked. And we got a lot of clutter and mess cleaned up with only a few old tarp pieces left to condense and pack out. The latrine was reconditioned and is ready to go. As of November 11, both the summer up and winter down trails were cleared of fallen timber. There is of course, as always, lots of green growth to cut back…
As of December 26, there are a few new trees down across the winter trial. I had to patch the latrine tarp and reconstruct the door. I also had to make some more repairs on the main tarp on the S. E. end. All is fine now and it is ready for use. But for the moment getting around up there is like walking through a corn maze. There are still a lot of down logs yet to be covered with snow and still lots of whomping..
Trail Work from last summer and fall:
Over the summer Nordic club members, Forest Service Fire crews, and Wallowa County Youth crew members put in considerable work to cut out logs and brush from the Nordic/Mt bike trails around Salt Creek Summit. They also worked to improve the trail tread for summer Mt bike use. A special effort was put into finishing the reconstruction of portions of the Wagon Road trail, started the previous fall. This work proceeded in conjunction with the Eastern Oregon Equestrian Club and the Forest Service. The boardwalks at the trail’s northern end were replaced, several additional culverts were installed and one new 20ft bridge was installed. Additionally, more brushing was done along this trail, and post construction trail rehabilitation was completed. All of the materials for this work and some labor were paid for by funds left over from trail work funded the previous year by Cycle Oregon and the National Forest Foundation. We need to thank Troy at Wallowa Resources for managing that funding for us.
Bike Club?:
We need to have another discussion about incorporating mt biking or bicycling in general into our “Nordic” club. Stay tuned…
That seems like enough for now…,
Jerry Hustafa
